nebulous
by closingdoors
Summary: She was always going to be just out of your reach and beautiful with someone else. COMPLETE.
So I heard you found somebody else
and at first I thought it was a lie  
I took all my things that make sounds  
the rest I can do without

 **\- Somebody Else, The 1975**

* * *

She is expletives and tangled curls and hot coffee spilling on skin.

You love her quietly.

She looks at you sometimes, softly, and you barely remember to smile. Sometimes she holds her hand out so you can balance as you walk on uneven ground. Sometimes she falls asleep beside you, face smashed against the pillow, curls a riot as they spill around her and over her shoulders. Her hand takes yours in her sleep and her engagement ring presses against your palm.

You count back from ten so that the words don't slip out.

* * *

One day you find yourself sitting in the back of her car while she argues with her mother in the front. You watch outside and the way the sun is beginning to creep out from behind the clouds for the first time this year. What you would not give to drive somewhere, where the sun is always out, and the roads last forever: just you headed infinitely towards that bright orange light.

The door slams and you startle, turning back to find that you have pulled up at your house. Angela is already storming towards the guest house. Jane pulls a hand through her knotted hair, chest heaving and delightfully flushed. You reach forward to squeeze her shoulder and she doesn't flinch away from your touch like so many others have before her.

"She's just worried about you. She loves you," you say.

Jane leans her head back against the headrest, sighing. "I know."

She twirls the ring on her finger. It used to make your stomach flip. It used to do so many things. Made you cry late at night when it was dark and no-one was around to see. Made you want to throw things and yell in a way that only reminded you of her.

A little while after she had first begun wearing it, it had made you accept that she was always going to be just out of your reach and beautiful with someone else. Now, it makes you feel as though you are floating, legs kicking in tepid water to keep yourself afloat. You can feel the currents forming and waves beginning to rise and somewhere, out there, she is being pulled safely to shore by someone that knows how to swim.

Now it lets you appreciate the way that the shadows play across her collarbones, curling around her calves.

Now it lets you appreciate these last moments you have with her.

Now it lets you let go day by day.

"Things will be different when Casey comes back. When she has the wedding to plan for you," you say and swallow around the lump in your throat. "You'll all be happier then."

She turns to you, all slow smile and sad eyes.

"Thanks, Maura."

She reaches for your hand and squeezes. It is the fifty-ninth time she has held your hand since she got engaged. You are hoping for forty-one more before she leaves.

* * *

You turn down takeout with her one night for dinner at the kind of restaurant you went to before you met her. The man you go with, Jonathan, is everything you are supposed to want, everything that you used to want. Someone you might have learned to love, once. Halfway through dinner you pull your legs up and against your chest while you sit alone in a toilet cubicle and count back from ten.

You let him kiss you goodnight.

He tastes nothing like her. In some ways you are grateful for it.

You fall asleep and dream of her laugh, her skin, her lips. Her.

* * *

She is affectionate with you most. Her hands around you and voice in your ear – the only thing that you can hear through the ringing. She says your name again and again and it is then that you can feel her pulling as you lean against her, your arms draped around her shoulders and forehead against her collarbone. You try to make your legs work but everything is beginning to go sideways. You try to pull your head back to look at her but pain rips through you, feels like it's tearing and clawing at your skin and as you scream you finally see her, face covered in dust and worry.

The world is dark before you can meet her eyes.

* * *

Your hands grip the metal bars as you try to drag one of your heavy legs forward.

She stands at the end, your goal, as your physical therapist encourages you with slow and soft words. You manage two steps before your arms begin to tremble with exhaustion and your skin is slippery with sweat. Your PT encourages you to try one more time and as you set your jaw and try to lift your right foot, she is running towards you, and catches you when your arms finally give out and you crumple to the ground.

"You're okay," she murmurs, so gentle. Hand brushing your hair away from your face. It is free of ash and dust and blood now, so different to the woman you had woken up to two weeks ago. "You'll get there. You will."

Most days, you don't want to.

You don't tell her this. You close your eyes and count back from ten.

* * *

They had buried Korsak while you were still asleep.

The hospital lets you out for the afternoon under the conditions that you use a wheelchair. Jane offers to push. The grass crunches beneath it as Jane navigates her way to the far left corner of the cemetery, passing decaying headstones and dead flowers. Jane had walked through this place carrying the coffin which held Korsak's body. She had done this and given the eulogy and stayed strong. She had done all of this when she had not known whether you were ever going to wake up again.

It is still fuzzy, the space in which you were in a coma. There are fragments you can snatch and make sense of, pained and grieving whispers of your name, her voice the forefront. It is not enough to define the experience of those three weeks.

"Here," Jane murmurs, stopping.

You stare.

It still doesn't feel real, that a friend of yours is six feet beneath this ground. You keep waiting for the moment when the grief crushes your chest.

It never comes.

"I want to go," you rasp.

"Maur?"

You grip the wheels and push yourself away, back onto the path and following it until you are at the cemetery gates. You know that she could easily catch up to you, turn you back around, force you to look. Instead she gives you space and appears five minutes after, all lanky long limbs and suddenly you can't do it – you can never be near her ever again.

She had pulled you from the rubble instead of Korsak, her partner.

"He begged me to take you, you know?"

You close your eyes and frown, feeling your skin pinch. You want to run away from here but you are so ridiculously, stupidly trapped with her.

"He had more people to miss him than I would've."

"Maur…"

"You should've left me to die," you spit, and when you open your eyes, you are surprise to find that she is not angry. She is crying.

"I couldn't do it, Maura," Jane whispers, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. "I couldn't choose him over you. He kept telling me to take you and I – I can't do anything, Maura, I can't live my _life_ without you in it."

You scoff. "You manage just fine without me."

She does not speak again when she drives you back. Her face hardens and the tears disappear. She helps you into the chair again and wheels you to the doors of the hospital before she leaves without goodbye.

* * *

On the day that you manage to take steps without relying on the bars, she is not there to witness it.

You try to keep your chin up as your PT claps enthusiastically when you take another step. It burns, a strip of fire running up and down the back of your calves and straining around your knees. You have no goal to walk towards now and this makes it easier somehow. It is almost like the stretch of road you dream of. You find yourself closing your eyes and taking another step.

The door slams open. You reach for the bars when it startles you and find Jane has barged into the room, car keys still in her hand, Casey standing right behind her.

"I'm late," she states before cursing. Casey reaches out to squeeze her hand but she turns back to you. "I'm sorry, Maura – Casey just got back for the first time since the bombing, I almost forgot…"

She winces once she realises what she's said but you simply shake your head and release the bars. She watches, enraptured, as you take two slow steps without the support, delight spilling across her cheeks and in her eyes as she smiles. Your lungs burn with the effort and your legs are straining so much that you feel as though they are about to fall away from your body. But it is worth it, for the way she is looking at you, and not Casey, just for a moment.

* * *

She is on call on your first day back at work. You step inside the newly renovated precinct, staring around in wonder. How much it has changed in ten months, uniforms working and moving around you without a second glance. You keep your head down and stare at your flat ballet pumps, only looking up when you reach the elevator doors. By the time you have reached your office your legs are almost screaming with pain. You're supposed to be using a cane when you have to do too much moving around.

You practically fall into your office chair, and it is only then that you notice her sitting on the sofa opposite your desk, head tilting back as she sleeps.

The ring still sits on her finger. Angela has told you about the wedding they are going to have in the fall, five months away. You have five months left of her, until she begins to move around the country when you can barely move your legs.

She raises her head slowly when you call her name, blinking sluggishly.

"Maur," she murmurs, smiling. "Hey."

"You're not scheduled to work today."

"Nope. But you are."

She hovers around you for the rest of the day despite the fact that all you have to do is paperwork. She holds out an arm when you struggle to walk down the stairs away from the precinct. The stars linger above you and her as you stop in front of your car, just staring at her for a moment.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

You look down at the keys in your hand. "For saving me. I know leaving Korsak must have – I can't even imagine."

She doesn't speak, just leans forward to kiss your temple. You close your eyes. This is the most beautiful torture you have ever known.

"I'd choose you every time."

* * *

She lets herself in to your place one night, when it is dark and silent but your ears are rattling with screams and your eyes can see nothing but rubble and debris, your hands covered in dust and ashes and the blood of your legs.

You hadn't called her. Still, you are not surprised when she slips into bed beside you. It has been exactly a year since the bombing, since you all lost Korsak and you almost didn't make it. She pulls you close until you are curling against her, her palm flat against the skin of your back beneath your t-shirt, warm and soothing and cutting with its ring. Her lips press against yours briefly, eager and chaste. You fall asleep against her and wake up alone.

You are never sure what is real and what is just dreams nowadays.

* * *

A month before her wedding, when it's still summer, she drags you to Revere Beach. You thought she didn't like beaches, but with the sun high above you she strips off her white shirt in favour of a tank top and changes into a pair of jean shorts that finish just above her knee. It occurs to you suddenly that you have never seen her wedding dress, that she has never made you bridesmaid, that you don't think you have even received a wedding invitation. Will you not get to see her, how beautiful, how happy she will be, on the last day before you lose her?

"C'mon," she grins, taking your hand and pulling you over to the sand.

Your sundress ripples around your knees in the breeze as you pass the crowds with her, sand worming its way between your toes. It doesn't hurt to walk anymore. Sometimes, your left knee locks, but it is rare and you know how to push through it.

She eventually finds a stretch of the beach that is blissfully empty. Releases your hand (eighty-seven) and turns to you with a smile so wonderful you can't help but smile back.

Meters away, a mother playfully throws her daughter in the air, catching her before she lands in the water. She watches them carefully, almost wistfully.

You head towards the sea and feel it brush against your toes, cooling compared to the sun beating down on you. You breathe in deeply, closing your eyes. Someday you will kiss another beneath this same sun and love them without thinking of her. You can feel it growing, the acceptance, bubbling over from its small trap at the bottom of your heart. She will marry Casey and move across the country time and time again for him. You will love yourself. For you.

You shriek when she rushes up behind you, sweeping you off of your feet. You cling to her neck tightly and eye the water warily.

" _Jane,_ " you try to sound threatening as she smirks, wading deeper into the water until it almost brushes her jeans. "Don't you dare – "

But it's too late. She drops you into the freezing water and as you resurface, gasping, she's howling with laughter. You wipe your hair away from your eyes as you stand, dripping, and watch her. She is a work of art.

You know that when she is gone, this is how you will remember her: the sun in her eyes, the wind in her hair.

The world at your feet.

* * *

 **End**


End file.
